Topple (2020)
Sofia Karim
ARB, MA (Hons) Arch, Dip Arch
Sofia Karim has practiced architecture for over 20 years at studios including Norman Foster’s in London and Peter Eisenman’s in New York.
Her practice combines architecture, visual art and activism.
The incarceration of her uncle (photographer and activist Shahidul Alam) led to the development of her theories on an ‘Architecture of Disappearance’.
She explores architecture as a language of struggle and resistance, a means to speak truth to power, and re-examines its ideals of silence, truth, beauty and transcendence through this framework.
Her activism focuses on human rights across Bangladesh and India. She campaigned for the release of imprisoned artists, including Dr Alam and Tania Bruguera.
She is the founder of Turbine Bagh, a joint artists’ movement against fascism and the rise of far right nationalism in India and beyond. She has staged protest exhibitions at Tate Modern (Turbine Hall).
Her work has been presented at Harvard University and exhibited in museums and galleries in New York, Delhi, London and Dhaka. Her campaigns and art have been covered in publications including The Observer, The New York Times, The Art Newspaper and British Journal of Photography.
She has appeared on BBC World News, Channel 4 News, Al Jazeera and Sky News.
She is the founder of books4jail, a project sending books from artists, writers, and cultural institutions to prisoners.
She is a visiting critic at Westminster school of Architecture.